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Does the Mainstream Media Assist Wall Street In Hypocritical Hypothesis For Fear Of The Next Paradigm Shift?
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About two weeks ago I answered what was at the time one of the most amateurish reports coming out of the bit money center banks in some time in Theres' Something Fishy In The House Of Morgan, Pt. 2: Bitcoin Fear, Envy & Loathing. Well, it appears that there's a contest for the hypocritical hypothesis and Citibank intends to go for the gold, likely toppling JP Morgan's lead. In a nutshell, we have a gaggle of US based banks that have exhibited horrendous risk management, business judgement and trading/investment acumen nearly topple the global financial system, demand (as in ransom money) trillions of dollars of welfare (which they recieved and are still recieving) from the US taxpayer, and still pay out billions of dollars in bonuses and salaried compensation - all the while the US dollar is still safe and sound as the worlds deepest, most liquid currency market not to mention still being the world's reserve currency.

Now, a much, much, much smaller Bitcoin exchange fails after flashing obvious warning signs for months and does not require bailing out by the tax payer or the Federal Reserve (how can I emphasize how big a plus this is for Bitcoin), and bitcoin dips in price for a single evening - rebounding nigh immediately! Citibank and JP Morgan's incompetence through the entire world into a near depression - and that's with globally collaborative ZIRP, trillion's of dollars of bailouts and the clandestive changing of accounting rules and the morphing if simple math to make it look like the insolvent were really not so.

Re: Mt. Gox failure - Would Mt. Gox still be in business today, like JPM and Citi if the Federal Reserve dropped rates to a negative level, FASB authorized the changing of accounting standards to minimize Gox's liabilities and no one at the exchange was held liable for what appeared to be outright fraud, as claimed by the SEC? would there be analysts in Mt. Gox writing silly papers overflowing with hypocritical hypothesis about how XYZ the dollar was dead because a US bank went bust? Probably!

I've worked hard to establish a strong reputation - not only in terms of competence but in terms of integrity. For those who don't know of me, you canview my media apearances and calls as well as my Wikipedia page. You see, my mommy and daddy raised me to appreciate both aspects of success - not only one. With that in mind I'd like to address the recent report from JP Morgan slamming Bitcoin. Just so most know my viewpoint, the typical Bitcoin enthusiast and entrepeneur is primarily technologist leaning, thus may or may not see all of the aspects of the financial side of this new... "thing". In addition, and because of that, the financial guys often get away with some outrageous bullshit that they'd never even try under different circumstances. Let's apply this perspective to JPM's latest FX strategic outlook report, "The Audacity of Bitcoin". I will refute this report, point by point, and in the process make the managing director whose name is on the report look downright ignorant and uneducated. This is not a personal attack or an attempt at sleight (hey, he may be a downright stand-up guy), I am simply calling it as I see it.

Before we get to the report though, I want to address the foolishness of following these "reports" from the big name brand money center banks.

Mainstream media entities such as the Wall Street Journal and Business Insider take the conflicted interest ridden drivel from these investment banks as actual legitimate analysis and actually base their reporting on it. That really gives me pause! Now on to addressing what Citibank claims as espoused through Business Insider, and I quote:

In a new note, Citi currency strategist — and the bank's defacto Bitcoin analyst — Steven Englander basically asks: What's the point of Bitcoin now?

But for Englander, the technical glitch that hit not only Gox but other exchanges "seems to have been known for years without the Bitcoin developers instituting a complete fix,"... "So one question is whether the decentralized structure, which is the attraction to many, makes it too cumbersome to enact essential fixes."

"Bitcoin transactions [were] thought to be impregnable and turned out not to be," said Englander. "Earlier security questions had centered around everything except the possibility that there might be a fraudulent transactions record. The imperviousness to fraud was one the big attractions of Bitcoin and the surprise exploitation of a known defect is a setback. Now it looks like just another payments system that has to worry about fraud."

Where am I to start with this? Long story short, this is plain old simple ignorance! Bitcoin is open source software. That is why you get it for free! It's not as if the core Bitcoin development team ran a company and Mt. Gox bought a commercial software package from them with a warranty and represenations. Mt. Gox relied on an open sourced code base and refused to both contribute back to the community and even keep abreast of what was going on in the community. The end result? A problem that was recognized and solved 3 years ago went unseen by Mt. Gox until they were bled of hundreds of million of dollars worth of bitcoin. JPM acts as if it is the open source communty's responsibility to instruct Mt. Gox on how to write and maintain software when in actuality it was Mt. Gox's responsibility to give back to and monitor the open source community!!! Notice how entities that were paying attention and playing by the open source communities rules were unscathed by this so-called "defect". If I say there is a hole in the ground and I send out a report that there is a hole in the ground, but you don't read that report and continue to walk until you fall into the hole - all the while knowing you gained access to the ground for free, are you going to blame the ground for being imperfect or yourself for ignoring the community that gave you free access when the warned you about the hole and even gave you instructions on how to avoid the hole?

"Bitcoin's market cap on paper by far exceeds that of the competition and that are many Bitcoin holders heavily invested in Bitcoin, so it has a first mover advantage. However as a store of value, its only value is reputational, and recent developments have shaken that reputation."

Go to 1:25 in this video for an answer to the statement above...

Business insider goes on to warn of the following risk: "That big banks themselves co-opt the still-relevant technological developments embedded in Bitcoin and junk all the bad parts". Actually, the banks will implement bad parts and junk all the good parts. You see, this is all relative. In general, what's good for you and me is generally bad for the banks, and vice versa. Why do Citibank and JP Morgan harp on the pitfalls of decentralization? It's because the banks are the guys with the centralized servers!!! If you eliminate the need for centralized servers you eliminate the need for banks!

Why harp on the dangers of peer to peer? Because bank branches will disappear in a heartbeat, as will centralized exchanges and the ability to pack in massive fees and charges unbenknownst to the client, the same fees and charges that fund those oh so many decimillionaire annual bonuses. It means a paycut for Wall Street and Wall Street is known to be vociferous in its attempts to avoid paycuts.